


someday, maybe soon

by ephemeraldaydreams



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Crowley didn't want to help but Aziraphale did and Crowley is soft for his angel, Developing Relationship, Fallen Angel, Gabriel asks for help, Gabriel redemption...eventually, Getting Together, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Mutual Pining, Post-Canon, no beta we die like women, specifically Gabriel has fallen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-18 10:02:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19332316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ephemeraldaydreams/pseuds/ephemeraldaydreams
Summary: Two years after the Apocollapse, Gabriel falls and turns to Aziraphale and Crowley for help. Despite Crowley's protests, Aziraphale agrees to let Gabriel stay for as long as he needs, on the condition that he (1) learns to love humanity and (2) opens his heart, at least a little, to demons.Beelzebub is sent to find the newly fallen angel, build rapport with them, and bring them back to Hell. When she finds out that Gabriel is the one who has fallen, she realizes that the job might be a little more difficult that she had bargained for.Gabriel doesn't want Aziraphale and Crowley to know the real reason why he fell. So, he pushes it off to the side and hopes that they won't interrogate him too much as long as he adheres to their conditions. In his quest to open up to demons, he might just be the final shove that a certain pair of ineffable dumbasses needed. And who knows, he might also find love in an unexpected place along the way.





	someday, maybe soon

“Angel!” Crowley slid through the front door of his companion's Soho bookstore. The sign was currently flipped to ‘Closed,’ but he knew that really meant closed to everybody but him, and perhaps the other members of Team Armageddidn’t. Crowley listened for some response, or at least some sign of life, but was met with deafening silence punctured by the occasional creak of an overladen bookshelf. He shuddered uncomfortably as he remembered the last time he was alone in the bookshop, when his world had gone up in flames.

“Aziraphale?” Crowley padded tentatively towards the stairs. Perhaps the angel was just deeply absorbed in a book, it’s not like that hadn’t happened before. 

Once, when Aziraphale was ensconced in “The Picture of Dorian Grey” for what must have been the 200th time, the Them had placed bets on how much noise they would have to make to interrupt his reading. After two hours of loud conversations, poorly made internet videos, and relentless, off-key kazoo playing, it seemed that nothing could break the angel’s concentration [1]. Eventually, Crowley decided to take pity on the kids [2] and whispered something particularly suggestive about Oscar Wilde in his best friend’s ear.

With flushed cheeks and a particularly scandalized look, Aziraphale huffed, “My dear, you know it wasn’t like that! We were just friends.” Crowley sniggered as the Them burst into heated conversation to determine who had won the bet. While Brian had been the closest at twenty minutes, Wensley, who had calculated Aziraphale’s reading speed to estimate the time it would take him to finish the book, argued that he actually would have been correct without Crowley’s intervention. Meanwhile, Pepper asserted that technically, the angel could likely read for several decades straight if he wanted to. In the end, Adam decided that nobody had won, and Aziraphale made them hot cocoa to celebrate the end of the admittedly dreadful bet.

This time though, Crowley had a nagging feeling that the angel wasn’t just tucked away somewhere reading. He tried to push down the thoughts that kept creeping into his brain, thoughts of Aziraphale being kidnapped by one of their respective head offices, thoughts of Aziraphale screaming in agony as he is pushed into a swirling pillar of hellfire, thoughts of being alone for all eternity, thoughts of never telling his angel… he paused at this final thought. Best not to get to ahead of himself here, he had no proof yet that anything bad had even happened.

Suddenly, he heard a quiet groan from the back room. He hustled over to investigate, and found the angel keeled over against the counter, breathing heavily and sweating profusely as if he had been struck by some human affliction.

“Angel…” Crowley exhaled as he stepped forward to support Aziraphale, who had turned and stumbled towards the demon. He pulled the angel into an embrace and pressed his lips into Aziraphale’s cherubic hair. Under normal circumstances, Crowley would have been exhilarated [3] to unexpectedly be holding Aziraphale in his arms. Right now, however, he was far too busy fretting over the wellbeing of the angel.

“What’s happened, Aziraphale?” Crowley asked, his voice muffled by the angel’s hair. “Please, tell me what I can do to help.”

“My wings,” Aziraphale choked out as he clutched at Crowley’s shirt, “they feel like they’re on fire.” 

Crowley tensed up. One of his worst fears was causing Aziraphale to Fall. Of course angels and demons had worked together before—even before the whole bathtub incident, Crowley was pretty sure that Michael had established backchannels to Hell millennia ago. However, those relationships, when they did arise, were strictly professional and finite, making them easy to justify even for the archangels when necessary. After all, working towards a mutually beneficial goal isn’t necessarily a sin, especially if you’re gathering intel on the enemy while you’re at it. 

Aziraphale and Crowley’s relationship, in comparison, had evolved into something Entirely Unprofessional [4] over the years, and Crowley had often thought that he would rather drink a dose of holy water than face the Rest of Time without the angel. Still, Crowley was acutely aware that their relationship put Aziraphale in a potentially compromising position [5], and would also rather drink holy water than accidentally corrupt the angel into Falling. His angel was too soft for Hell anyways.

Crowley was most scared that Aziraphale might Fall because of their association in the immediate aftermath of the Apocollapse and the failed executions. They waited with baited breath for two years to see something, anything was going to happen to Aziraphale. With no apparent consequences and minimal contact from Heaven or Hell since then, Crowley assumed that Aziraphale had been in the clear. Perhaps, he realized with trepidation, he had been wrong about that.

“Angel,” Crowley’s voice shook, “I know it hurts, but can you show me your wings?”

Aziraphale pulled back slightly from Crowley’s arms to look up at him. The angel’s eyes were bloodshot, and his chin quivered as he tearfully whimpered, “I’m scared... what if....” He trailed off, a haunted look in his eyes.

Crowley cupped Aziraphale’s cheek and delicately stroked away a stray tear with his thumb. “Shhh, it’s going to be okay, angel.” He pulled Aziraphale briefly back into his chest to hide the fact that he was trying to convince himself as much as he was trying to convince the angel. “I will look for you, you can close your eyes,” the demon whispered as evenly as he could to Aziraphale. 

Aziraphale nodded into Crowley’s palm before squeezing his eyes shut and unfurling his wings. 

Crowley’s breath hitched, and for a moment that could have stretched on for centuries, the whole world felt still as the demon processed. Finally, he let out a sigh of relief.

“It’s not you,” Crowley breathed, “It’s not you.”

Aziraphale blinked and turned his head to look at his wings, gleaming white and celestial as ever. “But to feel that much pain...” the angel began, “if it wasn’t me, then who Fell?”

Barely a second later, as if God Herself had heard Aziraphale’s question and sent the answer, the pair heard a weak, uneven knock on the glass of the bookstore’s door. Aziraphale fretfully glanced up at Crowley once more before he broke free of the demon’s arms and, still recovering from the ordeal, hobbled over to see who could possibly be outside the store.

Aziraphale swung the door open and gasped in shock, and Crowley’s jaw dropped as he stepped forward to see what, or who, had incited the angel’s reaction. 

On the front step, Gabriel was hunched over in a suit that had been torn beyond recognition. Two pairs of his wings were missing, and the remaining pair was scorched black and smouldering, a mere vestige of their former glory. His face was contorted in pain and his legs were shaking, as if they could barely hold his weight. He looked up at Crowley and Aziraphale pleadingly, his irises now a crimson red instead of their previous amethyst color. 

“Please,” the former archangel begged, gripping the wall for support and gasping for breath. “I have nowhere else to go.”

\-------

[1] What the kids didn’t realize was that Aziraphale was fully aware of their bet, and that he was going to string them along for as long as possible.

[2] Or perhaps himself. Crowley had invented the kazoo in the late 1800s. At the time, he had been particularly proud of it. He no longer was.

[3] and also far, far more flustered

[4] yet still Unnamed and virtually Unspoken. Crowley did once confess his feelings, but to Anathema instead of Aziraphale, and only because he was drunk and she saw right through him.

[5] Crowley tried not to think too much about the kind of compromising position he’d most like to put Aziraphale in. Aziraphale already thought that the demon went too fast, and if he could see the mental images in the deepest corners of Crowley’s mind, he would probably be comatose for at least a week.


End file.
